Mange har kanskje fått med seg at Irans president har vært på besøk i USA, i forbindelse med et FN-møte. I samme slengen ble han like godt invitert til å snakke på Columbia University, som en del av en serie foredrag og debatter kalt «World Leader Forum».
I forkant av arrangementet fikk Lee Bollinger en del tyn for dette, da mange mente at man ikke burde snakke med fienden og alt mulig slikt. Jeg sakser inn et avsnitt fra wikipedia fordi det fremstiller kritikerne i et dårlig lys:
Some of Bollinger's critics have accused him of hypocrisy for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak at the university in the name of academic freedom and freedom of expression, but citing those same values in 2005 as justifications not to readmit an ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) program to Columbia in light of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays. Explaining his ROTC decision at the time, Bollinger wrote: "the university has an obligation, deeply rooted in the core values of an academic institution and in First Amendment principles, to protect its students from improper discrimination and humiliation."
Fourth, to be clear on another matter - this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any “rights” of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self-restraint against the very natural but often counter-productive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.
According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executed in Iran so far this year – 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone. This annual total includes at least two children – further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.
According to reports by the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent group as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, the Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.While your predecessor government was instrumental in providing the US with intelligence and base support in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming, and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces.
Og til slutt en ting til, med det samme jeg er så godt i gang med å kommentere ting fra avisene. Jeg leste en liten artikkel om norske universiteters plassering på internasjonale rangeringer av universiteter, der leder i NSU, Per Anders T. Langerud, har sagt følgende:
De ser kun på gjennomføringsgraden, antall studenter, forskningskvaliteten og ulike gjennomsnitt. Hvilken kvalitet studiet har, sier rangeringene ingenting om, sier Langerød til Aftenposten Forbruker.
-Tor Nordam